The Unnamed Pet
by prplemyth
Summary: Percy and Annabeth have accidentally-on-purpose acquired a pet. The problem? They can't seem to agree on a name. Future fic - Percabeth. Oneshot.


_A/N: After seeing the Sea of Monsters movie (!) for the second time last night, I realized I felt a hankering for Annabeth POV, so as a prelude to hopefully going back to the Reynabeth swap AU, I give you the goofiest Percabeth fic I've posted here since that one with One Direction in it that we don't talk about. I hope you enjoy this story!_

* * *

"Corner it!"

"You can't corner it! You'll scare it out of its mind, and then it'll just attack!"

"If anyone's getting bitten here it's you, Jackson."

"You can't last name me anymore, Jackson, we're both Jackson."

"Chase-Jackson, actually."

"Is this really what we should be arguing about when we have a fiend on the loose?!"

"Fiend is the right word."

The two of us stood, Percy with a rolling pin he got from gods-knew-where, and me with a blanket that was way too small for the goal, staring at the menace in front of us.

"Oh no," I quietly whined. "I know that look."

"What's he going to do now?" Percy asked, looking horrified.

And that's when our new puppy started to pee on the floor.

Percy collapsed to the floor. "No!" he exclaimed, the agony of defeat painted across his cheeks. "We were SO CLOSE."

I patted him on the shoulder and pulled him up. "I think this is Zeus punishing you for wanting to name your dog after him."

Percy rolled his eyes. "Okay, first of all, our dog. Second of all, it would be hilarious!" He tilted his head upward, facing his body toward the direction of the Empire State Building. "And black labs are very formidable, strong, good dogs!"

"They're known to be not all that smart."

Percy shot me a glare. "Not helping!" he hissed in my direction. He looked back up toward the ceiling. "Ignore the blonde girl!"

After swatting Percy on the arm with a laugh, I turned back to our as of yet unnamed new member of the family. "Come here, boy," I said calmly, "come here, little one, it's okay. Daddy's just kind of a lunatic, that's all."

"Daddy?!" exclaimed Percy incredulously. "You want the puppy to call me Daddy?"

"The puppy can't call you anything, Percy," I said, "the puppy cannot speak."

"Not yet," he muttered, "but knowing our luck…"

I felt my eyes widen in horror. "Oh, gods, please do not finish that sentence."

He nodded. "Well, either way, after that little present, I'm getting paper towels and Clorox wipes."

Percy and I hadn't exactly planned on getting a puppy, per se. Instead, we had the unexpected discovery of Clarisse's weakness: baby animals who don't have a home. Four weeks ago, she had found a box of puppies outside her apartment down on Long Island, and three weeks, six days, and eight hours ago, most of us demigods got an email, phone call, or Iris Message from Chris telling us that he had five out of six puppies he and Clarisse couldn't take care of, and that he'd be eternally grateful for anyone who could take them off their hands.

Fast forward to a week and a half ago when we made our way down there, and Percy fell in love with a little boy who became this little peeing menace that was going to destroy my beautiful hardwood floors before Percy could make an "I'm pissed" joke about it. Rachel, Reyna and Piper each adopted one, and then Leo decided he would take two.

We're still laughing at him for that choice.

I kept cooing to the little puppy, wishing we had a name for him so that he could become more comfortable with us, but we couldn't agree on one. I wanted something cute like Aristotle or Aeschylus, but Percy didn't want the puppy to be predisposed to bath tub epiphanies or getting killed by turtles. Percy thought it would be funny to name the dog Zeus, Hercules or Kronos– clearly I did not think the same.

"Come here, sweet pea," I said, clucking my tongue and whistling every so often to see what he best responded to. "It's okay, we're your friends!"

The puppy looked at me like I was a four eyed platypus, head cocked to the side, and a clear intelligence in his eyes I hadn't seen before.

"You know exactly what's going on," I said, sitting back on my heels, "and you just love messing with us, huh?"

The puppy's tongue lolled out and his tail started wagging. "You silly puppy," I laughed as his too-big feet pattered on the floor. He sat down on the floor in front of me, and I couldn't resist petting him. "Once you're trained you're going to be smarter than Percy and me, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't say that," said Percy, returning with the cleaning products.

The puppy and I looked up at him. "You didn't see the expression on his face when I started talking to him," I countered. "This kid's going to be a genius. I can tell." I scratched his ears and he pushed his head up into my hand. "Puppy of Athena, you'll be, right?"

That's when the dog got so excited he lost his balance and rolled over a couple of times until he bumped into the puppy bed we'd gotten for him. He stood up and started barking at it.

Percy was clearly trying to hold back his laughter. "Yeah," he said, his face strained from the effort of keeping a straight face, "great intelligence in this one I sense."

"Oh, can it, Yoda, and get to the pee cleaning."

* * *

"Your turn," I grumbled as the puppy yapped its head off for the thirtieth time that night. "Go help him find the puppy pad thing."

"You do it," mumbled Percy, rolling his face into the pillow."

"Ugh," I groaned, "if you're like this when we're having kids, I'm never risking sex again."

"I'm up," said Percy, rolling out of the bed and falling face first onto the floor. "Okay, first down, then up. Where's he?"

"Living kitchen."

"What?"

I blinked and sat up. "Didn't I say living room?"

"You said living kitchen."

I sighed. "It's two in the morning and the dog's been waking me up every three hours. Sue me."

Percy sighed. As I moved to get out of bed, he said, "No, you sleep, Annabeth, I'll go get him."

"Nah, I'm up," I said, throwing the blankets off of me, "I'll come with."

The two of us padded into the living room, where the puppy was sitting on the puppy pad, looking extremely proud of himself.

"You did it!" I exclaimed. "Oh, what a good boy who would be a great boy if he didn't decide to wake us up." I patted him on his head. "Again. For the millionth time tonight for the fourteenth night in a row."

"He seems smarter than we expected," said Percy. "I'm liking him a lot more now." He curled up on the couch and the puppy skittered off in his direction, still, after two weeks, not quite used to the smooth floors. Percy's expression when he picked up the puppy and set him on his chest, cuddling him tightly, warmed my heart unexpectedly and made me forget I was exhausted and had a blueprint due for the architectural firm due in two days, and that I was teaching at Columbia in a month and still wasn't half ready.

"Scoot over," I said, making my way to the couch. "I want to cuddle too." Percy opened an arm for me and I settled into it, feeling more like sleeping than I had in ages. The puppy snuggled up and nestled in the space between my chest and Percy's, and I soon felt my eyes drifting shut. The three of us ended up falling asleep on the couch that night.

* * *

The puppy still had no name when Percy came home late one night, covered in bruises and burns and looking like he'd had the Hades kicked out of him.

"Oh my gods!" I exclaimed, rushing to him, the puppy right on my heels. "What happened to you?!"

"Fire was arson," he said, wincing as he pulled off his jacket. "The crooks were too stupid to realize how fast first responders could be, so instead of running they jumped me and a couple of the guys as we got out of the truck. Couldn't fight back too well 'cause of how big the jackets were. Eventually they wrestled us out of the jackets, and got us so off balance all of us were on the ground." He ran a hand through his messy, greasy hair. "We didn't get them off of us until the next truck and the police officers got there."

"This is why I complain about you being so good at being a first responder," I muttered. I took a good look at him, and then realized: I hadn't seen him like this in ages.

Though I'd seen him bruised and battered by countless gods, immortal creatures, monsters, and even occasionally other demigods, I'd never get over my horror at what he looked like when a mortal attacked him. He never fought back, just defended himself. He always said it wasn't fair that he had strength they didn't. I always said fairness was out of the question the second somebody jumped me and that the next person to mug me after that fateful day when I was eighteen was going to get a knife in the gut.

"What did they do to you?" I asked quietly, getting a warm wash cloth and beginning to mop off some of the bloody wounds on his arms. "This looks like –"

"Burns," he said tonelessly, "lit a couple of matches and threw when we were on the ground. I think they expected us to be the only ones there, but when you're setting fire to a building you're going to get more than one set of guys, and eventually they'll get taken down."

"How many were there?!" I exclaimed. The puppy started looking scared, and I realized from that and Percy's face how loud I had been speaking. Careful to lower my voice and steady it, I repeated,"How many?"

"About ten guys, but there weren't too many of us on that first truck."

Then I had to ask the most obvious question that would inevitably lead me to grumbling about Percy's self sacrificing complex. "But you're the son of Poseidon!" I exclaimed. "Couldn't you have gotten water or something –"

He shook his head. "I didn't want to risk breaking the water main – that neighborhood had just been refurbished and there were a lot of kids around." He looked down at his arms. "They thought they'd flushed out all of the bad influences, but that clearly didn't happen."

"And you decided you'd just let them kick your ass and burn you in retaliation?" I forced back the tears I felt in my eyes, but I knew Percy had seen them.

"Hey," he said, cupping my cheek in his hand. "I'm fine. It's getting better already, see?

"It was worse?!" I exclaimed.

He rolled his eyes and continued. "I knew I'd heal, and it's nothing like that broken collarbone and dislocated shoulder I got two years ago falling from that three story –"

" – which you did because, again, you had to go inside and make sure the kid wasn't right about the cat, which he wasn't because the cat was outside."

He gave me a look that shut me up. "I'm fine, Annabeth," he said firmly, "and so is everyone but a few of the guys and two or three residents, but no one's even planned to be in the hospital for more than two or three hours. If I'd broken that water main, a bunch of kids would be without their homes. I couldn't take that chance. The arsonists were taken down quickly afterwards, and we'll all heal before you know it."

I kissed his dirty forehead and rolled my eyes. "You're an idiot," I said. "And I'm making cookies for the guys down at the station."

Percy laughed. "Okay, you mean I'm making the cookies because we'd have another fire on our hands if you did it. And you're calling me an idiot because you're mad that, for once, you're the one letting your emotions cloud your judgment, not me."

I glared at him. "Every once in a while I get to do that. Right, puppy?"

The puppy was licking Percy's pant leg, completely oblivious to anything that was going on. He looked back up at Percy, and Percy picked him up as I ran water to help him heal.

To our surprise, the puppy ran and played in the sink water, lapping up some water and then, weirdly enough, letting it dribble out onto the washcloth that I was mopping Percy up with.

"I think he's trying to help," said Percy. "But I'm not sure I want dog drool on my cuts."

"Agreed," I said. "Let's go get you cleaned up while you heal, okay? Get you in the shower." I took his hand and tried to lead him to the bathroom, but he stayed put.

"Do you know what they sometimes call firefighters in New England?" Percy said quietly.

I shook my head, slightly surprised that I was doing so. "No idea."

"Jakes," Percy replied, "a good firefighter, the best of the best, was called a Good Jake. It's big in the Boston area, mostly, and I know we're in New York, but what if we –"

I looked down at the puppy still in the sink. He was wagging his tail and sticking his face under the faucet, surprised and gleeful each time the water faithfully dribbled all over his little face. "Jake," I said, "I like it."

At the sound of his new name, the puppy looked up at me, an expression so giddy I nearly laughed. "Jake," I singsonged, "come here."

Instantly the puppy hopped out of the sink and trotted across the counter toward me, wary of the high drop, and plopped his bottom down right in front of me.

"I think he liked his name," said Percy. "Don't you, little buddy?" Percy went to pick up Jake, who clawed up his shirt and hung there, looking startled, until Percy held onto him.

"You're lucky those burns have almost healed," I mentioned, "or else that might have hurt."

"Nah," said Percy, nuzzling his nose into the fur on top of Jake's head, and then pulling me in for a hug, "not from this little guy."

* * *

"PERCY!" I shouted over the fire alarm. "Percy, what the hell's going on?"

"I'm sorry!" he yelled. "I was trying to teach Carlie how to make toast and it caught a paper towel on fire!"

I stumbled into the kitchen where our two year old daughter was sitting on the kitchen counter playing with two spoons. "You can't teach a two year old how to use a toaster, Percy!" I exclaimed. "For heaven's sake, there's even a warning on her bath toys saying she shouldn't use them until she's three!"

He shrugged apologetically. "But she's smart?" he suggested.

I sighed deeply, not particularly willing to continue that conversation. "At least you put out the fire," I said, relieved.

"Yeah," replied Percy, "that's –"

"Jake did it," said Carlie, still playing with her spoons. "Jakey's a good doggy. Jakey go splish splash with the sink and dribbled water on the toes-tah. And I still want toast, Mommy."

I raised a single eyebrow. "Really, Lieutenant?" I asked. "We've got a head honcho of the NYFD in the apartment and the dog puts out the fire?"

"I turned on the water and got Carlie out of the way, turned back to the fire, and it was already out." Percy shrugged again. "At least the fire's gone, right?"

I laughed. "How did our eighty pound lab get into the sink?" I asked.

"Stool," said Carlie, pointing at the step stool we had gotten her so she could feel taller. "Jakey stood up and went gulp gulp spit!" She smiled. "And may I please have toast?"

I picked Carlie up off of the counter, and checked her briefly for any burns. "No one's hurt, right?" I asked. "We might need a new toaster and some cleanup is in order, but other than that, no damage, I'm assuming?"

Carlie nodded. "Toast?" she asked.

Percy said, "all seems to be clear, ma'am," tipping an invisible firefighter's hat.

"Don't call me ma'am," I said, trying to appear stern but failing. I looked down at Jake, who was sitting on his dog bed as though nothing happened. "And you, our Good Jake, deserve a treat."

That's when I slipped on the massive puddle he'd made on the ground. Percy managed to grab Carlie, but I was on the ground with a sprained wrist, I could already tell. Jake rushed over to me, checking me to make sure I wasn't dying, and Carlie, up in Percy's arms, gasped. "Mommy, are you okay? Should we get some toast?"

Percy eyed me warily. "What do you need us to do, honey?"

"Get me nectar and a chocolate bar," I grumbled. "And, for the love of Athena, get the girl some toast."

Jake barked.

"And give the dog a treat."

* * *

_For my firefighter Dad, who's always wanted a Labrador named Jake._


End file.
